Ben Lowry: Northern Ireland faces big challenges but is not on its way out of the United Kingdom

He also said that re the future of the Union that unionists “need to wake up and recognise that the emperor has no clothes”. He said that “ we are Irishmen and it’s nonsense to believe we’re not. We need to rediscover some of that Irishness”.

He said he voted for Brexit in 2016 and “would still vote to leave” but not if it meant an Irish Sea border.

Mr Wallace further said: "To talk to these groups that are calling for a new Ireland to me is not an indication of weakness: it’s an indication of strength.”

And he said that Terence O’Neill, the UUP leader at the end of the 1960s, had been “patronising and it didn’t work. Roman Catholics just thought they were being taken for granted and treated as just those who could be turned into a Protestants if you gave them a colour TV or whatever”. Also that he thought that “if Brian Faulkner has been in position earlier … it might have been easier to get reforms through at an earlier stage and it would have settled things down a bit”.

I accepted an invite to go on BBC Radio Ulster Talkback about these striking comments. Mr Thompson has in my experience always been friendly and often willing to contribute to our letters pages. I can only reiterate what I said on radio: that I read his thoughts with interest, and that I look forward to running an essay by him soon on the 25th anniversary of the Caleb Foundation, the evangelical group.

If Mr Thompson is saying that he was wrong for five decades in his politics, as seems to be the implication of his comments about wishing that Terence O’Neill and Brian Faulkner succeeded, when the then DUP leader so determinedly sought to bring them down, then that perhaps shows an admirable honesty.

But I think his comments need directly challenged for two reasons.

First because Mr Thompson has said this before, and must have noticed how it is seized upon. He had already said earlier this year on BBC Talkback that he did not feel his heritage was safe in the Union. And in this most recent interview his comments led to a front page story about how he felt a united Ireland was inevitable.

Unionists already feel (I would say correctly) that the whole concept of a ‘New Ireland’ is accepted on its own terms and is constantly covered in the media, out of proportion of any indication of a significant change in public feeling on the constitutional question. New books on it get much publicity and the idea of a move towards a supposedly New Ireland was repeatedly discussed after the 2022 and 2023 Stormont and council elections, which showed a decline in unionism but no real increase in nationalism.

This is not a reason why Mr Thompson should not express his view, but it is certainly a reason why his arguments deserve scrutiny. And that scrutiny shows some dubious logic that forms the second reason why he needs to be challenged.

The former DUP first minister Peter Robinson wrote a blog in which he implicitly challenged Mr Thompson, albeit not naming him. Mr Robinson rebutted the idea that Northern Ireland was on the way out of the UK. But on Talkback I focused on respects in which Mr Thompson was accepting or adopting nationalist ideas or language or premises – as indeed are other moderate nationalists. I have written about this before, such as the mythological unionist hunt for ‘lundys’, a nationalist claim that some unionists have endorsed (Ben Lowry: Unionists are not looking for lundies yet even unionists are claiming that we are!).

Here are five dubious claims made by Mr Thompson, several of which are often adopted by unionists.

First, he says a united Ireland is inevitable. But this is a dated view. It was believed by some of the founders of the Northern Ireland state and feared by many unionists in the early years of the Troubles. Yet polling still shows a clear majority in favour of staying in the UK. My own fear that Brexit might shatter the UK (an idea to which the Brexiteer Mr Thompson arrived late) has not materialised. I would estimate that, overall, there has been a regrettable but minor 4% shift away from support for the Union since 2016.

Also, a much larger percentage of the population identifies as Northern Irish than did three decades ago. Hardly a sign that NI is withering.

Second, Mr Thompson was wrong to say NI was “carved off” in 1921. This is a republican claim. You could say that rest of Ireland, the 26 southwesterly counties that tended to be more overwhelmingly Catholic Irish, broke away from the UK. The first 50 years of their state was isolationist and poverty-stricken.

Third, Mr Thompson said on Talkback that nationalists do not understand the Protestant psyche. But it is arguable that evangelicals like him are becoming removed from the Protestant psyche, which is increasingly ethnic and cultural rather than religious.

Fourth, Mr Thompson said unionists could no longer “close the gates”. But did they? Through the Troubles unionists voted for a more moderate brand of unionism, the Ulster Unionists, than the DUP he supported (Ian Paisley topped the MEP elections but was unable to translate that into DUP dominance in elections in which he was not the candidate).

And fifth, by using the term ‘New Ireland’ Mr Thompson is, like a growing number of unionists, seeming to accept subconsciously the notion of a more welcoming Ireland. The Republic has changed markedly from the society I first remember in the 1970s, much of the change agreeable. But the relentless growth in retrospective support for IRA terrorism and also the deep anglophobia apparent during ​​​​​covid and since Brexit shows a society that is becoming more Irish nationalist than it was in the days when it was dominated by the Catholic church.

I believe unionism faces many challenges and write about them often. But one of the biggest of all is unionism seeming to accept the criticisms made against it and so feeling it must always concede to survive.

Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor